Acts 6 - Daily Bible Study

welcome to branch together my name is Jared and today we're reading from Acts chapter six the book of Acts is the unfolding drama the unfolding story of the first followers of Jesus as God is moving them to be witnesses throughout their entire world before we dive in let's take a moment and pray together Lord thank you for this day meet us where each one of us are right now help us listen help us calm ourselves help us ready ourselves to hear what you have for us today help us learn more about what it means to follow you and know you today we thank you for this book of Acts that tells the story of your first communities following you help us learn from them the good and the bad so we might be a faithful community that lives as your witnesses today name we pray amen Acts chapter 6 now in those days when the disciples were growing in number a complaint arose on the part of the Greek speaking Jews against the native Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food so the twelve called the whole group of the disciples together and said it is not right for us to neglect the Word of God to wait on tables but carefully select from among you brothers seven men who are well attested full of the Spirit and of wisdom whom we may put in charge of the necessary task but we will devote ourselves to prayer into the Ministry of the word the proposal please the entire group so they chose stephen a man full of faith and of the holy spirit with philip pro juris nicanor timon parmenas and nicolas a Gentile convert to judaism from antioch they stood these men before the apostles who prayed and place their hands on them the Word of God continued to spread the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly and a large group of pre became obedient to the faith now Steven full of grace and power was performing great wonders and miraculous signs among the people but some men from the synagogue of the freedmen as it was called both Syrians and Alexandrians as well as some from Silesia and the province of Asia stood up and argued with Stephen if they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke then they secretly instigated some men to say we have heard this man speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God they incited the people the elders and the experts in the law then they approached Stephen seized him and brought him before the council they brought forward false witnesses who said this man does not stop saying things against the Holy Spirit and the law for we have heard him saying that Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this place and change the customs that Moses handed down to us all who are sitting in the council looked intently at Stephen and saw his face was like the face of an angel acts 6 deals with a very practical problem in the life of the early church there were people from different ethnic backgrounds different people groups coming together a God has been bringing these different types of people together and calling them to be a new family in Jesus a new body the de Church is meant to be this one thing and there's a bit of a learning curve whenever you take different groups of people and try to have them all together and be some new thing it it's hard it's difficult people have different opinions different ways of living this community made sure it was caring for the widows in their community so there were people with widows who lost their husbands who didn't have other family to take care of them and this early church was committed to making sure that everyone was taken care of this community also made sure that everyone had their daily bread there was some distribution of food or something like that one group in the church the Helenus of the greek-speaking folks in the in the church we're complaining that there would weren't being cared for as well as some of the other widows they were being neglected in this daily distribution of food so the twelve the the first followers of Jesus this this group of twelve what we call apostles were the leaders at the time and they looked into the matter and said hey this is really important but this isn't our role our main function here is to preach the Word of God and to be committed to prayer so what we need is another group of people that can really handle this task and make sure this is done well so they chose seven men full of the spirit and full of wisdom to oversee this task of the daily distribution and as they did this the Word of God increased the disciples multiplied and many priests came to the faith which is really interesting it's this one line in there that you might just be easy to to run by as you're hearing the story of the Apostles and then this new group of people taking care of the widows it says the the priest a many priest came to face was just so fascinating because the priests were many of these priests were probably persecuting Jesus just a short time before and now as this this good news about Jesus is being told more and more people are coming these priests that used to persecute are now coming to follow Jesus and at the end of the chapter we see that some conflicts arise Stephen one of the seven is particularly full of grace and power and he's doing these signs and wonders and people begin to dispute with him he's challenged and accused of things that Jesus was accused of blasphemy messing with the law of Moses challenging the sacred place to the temple and like Jesus he is seized and brought before the council now a few things to consider or notice in this chapter one the commitment of this church to care for its community at the core of what this community was they were going to make sure that everyone was cared for well in this community it's not good to notice the leadership structures and the amount of people that committed to good work they had people set apart for preaching and teaching and they had people set apart for care in the community we see now that right now there's 19 people committed to taking on leadership in their community some for prayer in scriptures some for really on-the-ground tasks like making sure people get food um we also see that these people choose wisely and there's this laying on of hands of these new leaders it's pretty cool we'll see this laying on of hands more throughout the book of Acts and it there's this kind of passing the torch it seems like God's Spirit is moved from one person to the other and there's this kind of anointing for a task something else we see the person in charge of caring for the widows also knew the story of his community really well so we sometimes think oh ok these apostles these leaders they were set apart for prayer in Scripture then they set apart these seven guys Stephens one of them to do like beyond the ground task so maybe Stephen doesn't know his Scripture is his story well but that's not the case Stephen also seems to really really know his faith very well be able to argue about it be able to explain it he must know the Old Testament Scriptures well just something worth noting and the last thing to note in this chapter is that there's multiplication and conflict that's a common theme we'll see in the scriptures there's this painful conflict but also this incredible opportunity for the community to multiply for more disciples to be made and in fact when the conflict happens there's more pain and suffering and hurt but there's also tends to be this multiplication this this time that through pain through suffering through persecution the good news really goes out we see that when the church is faithful when it's wise and full of the Spirit amazing things happen the community multiplies and destra men is good and there's also conflict and we're going to see that in the chapters ahead some suffer some will suffer more but incredible things will happen that's all for today join us tomorrow as we dive into Acts chapter 7 [Music]

Channel: Branch Together

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Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 07 2018